Do We Want an “Open Society”?

Does our Constitution oblige us to tolerate ideas and minorities which may destroy us? No, says Mr.Kendall, and that interpretation must be fought

One of the major responsibilities of the teacher-scholar, I like to think, is to look to the health of the discussion process in his society. Let him, when he talks about his changing society, keep in mind the distinction between good change and bad change, and give his major attention to those proposals for change that seem to him well along toward getting themselves adopted without having been adequately discussed. In such proposals lie our greatest hazards, because they are pregnant with the two-fold possibility of resulting in transition from good to evil and of reducing free society itself to an absurdity, which surely it is if proposals are adopted in the absence of dispassionate inquiry into their merit.

WK

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Willmoore Kendall

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Does our Constitution oblige us to tolerate ideas and minorities which may destroy us? No, says Mr.Kendall, and that interpretation must be fought

One of the major responsibilities of the teacher-scholar, I like to think, is to look to the health of the discussion process in his society. Let him, when he talks about his changing society, keep in mind the distinction between good change and bad change, and give his major attention to those proposals for change that seem to him well along toward getting themselves adopted without having been adequately discussed. In such proposals lie our greatest hazards, because they are pregnant with the two-fold possibility of resulting in transition from good to evil and of reducing free society itself to an absurdity, which surely it is if proposals are adopted in the absence of dispassionate inquiry into their merit.